[E-voting] Question on optical scan

[Brian O'Byrne]

Aengus,

I think a significant chunk of what the banks and An Post deal with is
pre-printed and/or typewritten.

In both cases that part of the workload that is handwritten is handled through
manual systems. Handwritten cheques or lodgement slips are read by tellers and
typed into systems. An Post's annual labor relations problems at Christmas show
how much manual effort goes into processing the handwritten addresses on cards.

OCR from typewritten text is more reliable than OCR from handwritten text.

To get typewritten ballots you will need to take up Margaret's suggestion of a
printer to help the voter write the ballot, which leads to the suggestion that
the printer should record and count the ballot, bringing you back to DRE.

Brian.

Quoting Aengus Lawlor <aengusl at eircom.net>:

> On Wednesday, January 19, 2005 1:44 PM [GMT],
> Brian O'Byrne <bobyrne at statesoft.ie> wrote:
> 
> > It seems less easy where the voter has to express an order of
> > preference. Do you have many boxes beside each candidate (mark the
> > leftmost box for first preference) or do you have OCR that tries to
> > read numbers, or some other system?
> > I'd be concerned that OCR has a fairly high failure rate, and the
> > many boxes option is confusing for voters.
> >
> > Does anyone have experience of this?
> 
> The banks and An Post have a lot of experience in this area, using
> character sets that are far less standardised than would be needed for
> an OCR ballot counting (with printed ballots).
> 
> Ballot layout and design might need some thought, (card stock rather
> than paper, for ease of handling, some sort of "sleeve" or envelope for
> privacy, as folding might cause problems, etc) but the basic technology
> shouldn't pose significant problems.
> 
> Aengus
> 
> 
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Brian O'Byrne, Statesoft Ltd.
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